Saturday, July 14, 2012

More great summer reading!

I am currently immersed in Franck Thilliez' thriller, SYNDROME E, which has apparently already been purchased by a Hollywood studio for eventual movie magic. The tale combines the talents of a female cop who must juggle a sick child in the hospital, another child at camp, a very hot summer, and a busman's holiday of a vacation in which she ends up investigating a very disturbing film that leads to a friend's hysterical blindness.

On a different case (which will soon be related, I think), Franck Sharko, an officer of the Paris police, must investigate the appearance of five badly-mangled bodies recently unearthed at a construction site.

The book is fascinating, not only for its details about film, embedded images, and the unconscious, but also because of its discussion of neuroscience. A wonderful way to pass a hot summer day!!

Next up is Larissa Reinhart's PORTRAIT OF A DEAD GUY, which looks as though it will be much lighter, less stressful fare than Thilliez' SYNDROME. But Reinhart's book has a very unusual premise: that an artist is asked to paint a portrait of a dead man for that man's grieving family, and in the process she becomes involved in some unsavory situations. Looks promising!

Book One in the Undercover Dish series

Tributes to Great Writers

International Author Interviews

Mark Twain on Writing

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."